Un Cracks Down On Lawlessness Plaguing Kosovo

Albanian Leader To Work With Rivals

August 14, 1999|By From Tribune News Services.

PRISTINA, Yugoslavia — Plagued by near-daily attacks on international peacekeepers, UN officials announced new regulations Friday allowing them to detain or remove anyone deemed disruptive of the peace in Kosovo.

The announcement came as ethnic Albanian leader Ibrahim Rugova pledged to cooperate with officials administering the province, as well as rebel leaders.

International officials said Friday that Russian and German soldiers had come under fire in the past 24 hours.

A sniper bullet hit a Russian soldier in the shoulder Thursday while he was on guard duty near Gnjilane in southeastern Kosovo, NATO officials said. German peacekeepers also came under machine-gun fire that day, but there were no casualties, the German Defense Ministry said Friday.

The UN mission to Kosovo announced the new regulations in an attempt to curb such attacks, as well as rampant crime and ethnic violence between Kosovo's Albanians and the dwindling Serb population. The new regulations authorize peacekeepers and UN police to detain or remove anyone at any time, if such a move is deemed in the interest of maintaining order.

The regulations also would allow peacekeepers to expel people from the province in southern Serbia, the dominant Yugoslav republic, UN legal officials said.

Since NATO entered Kosovo on June 12, most of the province's 200,000 Serbs have fled, prompted by a series of attacks by ethnic Albanians that mimic their own treatment at the hands of Serb forces during the previous year's crackdown.

The KLA has been blamed for many of the attacks, but its leader, Hasim Thaci, has repeatedly denied the group's involvement.

Rugova, a rival of Thaci, told reporters Friday that his Democratic League of Kosovo party, known as the LDK, was prepared to work with Thaci. Last month, the LDK refused to take part in an interethnic transitional council, saying its representation was not equal to Thaci and his supporters.

"I am the elected president of Kosovo," Rugova said. "And we will altogether closely cooperate, including Mr. Thaci and others, and as such we will all participate in international administrative bodies until new elections."

But in an interview published Friday in France's three main newspapers, Rugova sounded less conciliatory.

"After NATO arrived in Kosovo, small groups of KLA came down from the mountains and went into towns and villages," he said. "It's normal that they put people in charge (but) . . . an agreement must be reached because running the whole country cannot be left to the KLA."

Rugova was twice elected president in unofficial voting, but his popularity has eroded recently.

In Belgrade, the state prosecutor said that regional prosecutors in Serbia have ordered war crimes investigations to be opened against Western leaders in connection with NATO's air war.

Dragisa Krsmanovic said the prosecutors in Belgrade, Novi Sad, Nis, Pristina and Prizren had requested that investigations be opened against U.S., British, French and German leaders, as well as NATO's outgoing chief, Javier Solana, and its commander, Gen. Wesley Clark.

Krsmanovic said they are accused of violating the Yugoslav criminal code, as well as the Geneva conventions on the conduct of war, by using cluster bombs and trying to assassinate Yugoslav President Slobodan Milosevic. Milosevic's residence in a Belgrade suburb was hit during the NATO bombardment, but he was not at home at the time.